nail art,nail art gallery, nail art designs

This one’s only a handful of easy steps, and basically just takes the half moon mani to a new level. I started with a two coat base of Deborah Lippmann’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun — it’s DL, do I even need to explain how great this formula is? The color was so bright and happy too, I had to resist the urge to go full 80s retro and throw some neon all over it, instead taking some inspiration from a tree bowing under the weight of so many ready-to-pick oranges… Step one was creating the shape of the orange wedge, which is basically the same as for the half moon, but slightly bigger/lower on the nail so you get more orange for your buck (I used a cream since it’s closer to a true orange rind color, but I’ve seen a lot of folks just go straight for the white too) — the importance of this is to help create a light colored background for the orange color to be laid on top of it, especially since my orange and yellow paints tend to be more translucent. You can use nail polish for this too, I just like the control of using acrylic paints.

Step two: go in with a detail brush and add a darker colored semicircle around the edge to create the skin for the orange:

Step three: fill in the meat of the orange, leaving a track around the edge (don’t mind that your textures with this may not be perfectly smooth, the topcoat will take care of it):

Step four: returning to the cream/white color, and again using the fine detail brush, start adding the segment lines for the orange, with an eye to also softening the curves around the edge (you don’t want perfectly jagged corners, nature likes soft edges) and a bigger chunk where the lines all meet for the center:

Step five: I used the tiny brush and some yellow paint to add a few little lines in the meat of the orange for some texture, then sealed it all down with a coat of Seche Vite… and of course went in and cleaned up my edges with an orangewood stick (you can use a q-tip too) and some nail polish remover. Voila, easy orange wedges! You can (obviously) switch up the color scheme too to create any kind of citrus yumminess you want.

Leave a Reply

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Search the Nails

The search box below will help if you're looking for a specific polish, otherwise you can use the links further down the sidebar to browse by polish color, theme, brand, whatever!

Have an Idea? I looooove getting ideas from people for what to do for the more intricate nail designs — use the email link up above to shoot me a note and I'll add your idea to the list! (because yes, there's a list, but it's AWESOME.)